Chapter - Middle Ages (For Printing)

Chapter 6
Medieval British Society, 10661485
ENGLAND The Population

The preceding chapters dealing with the period following the Norman Conquest have attempted to narrate the chief developments in the monarchy and government. Important as these matters are, they do not in themselves form a full history of the Middle Ages in Britain. It is essential to discuss medieval society, in order to obtain some picture of the lives of ordinary men and women who lived during the years between 1066 and 1485. Statistics about the actual size of the population are hard to obtain. The most useful sources relate only to England; these are the Domesday Book of 1086 and the poll tax returns of 1377. It is easy enough to add up the tenants listed in William the Conquerors surveythe number is about 275,000but not so simple to calculate the total population, including women and children. Allowance must also be made for evasion and omission. An educated guess at the population of England in the years immediately following the Conquest is two million. Similar estimates put the number of inhabitants in 1377 between 2.5 and 3 million. The gures for 1377, however, reect the great mortality associated with the Black Death, in which (as we have seen) about 40 percent of the inhabitants of the British Isles died. If one makes allowance for this loss, it seems likely that the population of England had risen to ve million or a bit more before the plague struck. The rst two centuries after the Conquest, then, saw a very signicant increase in population, in which the number of English men and women more than doubled, nally approximating the maximum population attained under Roman rule. The late fourteenth century witnessed a sudden decline. If one realizes that land area remained constant, one can easily appreciate the signicance of the changing conditions. As the population grew during the decades before the Black Death, it created serious pressures on available resources, probably lowered the standard of living, and forced a number of people to seek employment in areas unrelated to agriculture. After the plague there were not enough laborers to till all the soil that had been cultivated; many towns and villages shrank in size,
116 Part II Norman Britain
and some were even abandoned. Although the Black Death is always regarded as a tragedy, it did reduce a population that must have strained Englands resources. There are good reasons for believing that the standard of living for working people rose between 1350 and 1485. The only really large city was London. Its population in 1300 has been estimated at thirty to forty thousand. If these gures are correct, medieval London was no larger than Roman London at its peak, but the number of inhabitants had declined severely during the earlier Middle Ages. York, the most important city in northern England, probably had about ten thousand residents in 1300. Flourishing ports like Norwich and Bristol may have boasted populations of ve thousand each. Most other towns, even those that were county seats and trading centers, had fewer than three thousand inhabitants during the Middle Ages. Comparison with modern towns of this size will help one appreciate how small they were.
Social Structure: The Peasants

Although medieval men and women did not use modern terminology in describing social classes, they were familiar with the concept of order and degree. Medieval society was clearly stratied, with the king at the top, then feudal magnates or members of the nobility, followed by lords of manors, merchants, and clergy, all resting on the large, solid base of the peasantry. The interlocking relationships between these groups were ratied by the feudal concept of homage and fealty, by the manorial custom of villeinage, and by the church, which preached the importance of each member of society performing the appropriate services so that the whole body politic might ourish. Historians have often used the pyramid as a symbol or model of medieval society, mainly because its tapering form emphasizes the large number of laborers at the bottom and the fact that each higher group was smaller than the one below it, until nally the monarch occupied the highest pinnacle in solitary eminence. Another useful image is that of the Great Chain of Being, in which everything in the universe is arranged in a vertical, hierarchical line or chain with God at the top, followed by the angels and saints, humankind, animals, plants, and rocks. The human category was divided into the Three Orders, or Estates. As medieval society viewed it, the First Estate was those who pray (the clergy), the Second Estate those who ght (the nobility), and the Third Estate those who work (the peasants). As town life developed in the twelfth century and thereafter, these simple categories began to break down with the addition of merchants, guildsmen, scholars, and so forth. But the image of the chain enduredeach link necessary but unchanging in its hierarchical relationship to the others. The agricultural workers who formed the bulk of English society were legally separated into two groups, the free and the unfree. Those who were unfree were not slaves, but as villeins or serfs they were bound to remain on the manors where they had been born, performing compulsory labor services in exchange for modest housing and minimal amounts of land. They needed their lords permission to marry and to educate their children. Unless he agreed, they could not move to cities or other
Chapter 6 Medieval British Society, 10661485 117
manors or enter religious orders. They were not legally free to buy, sell, or bequeath land or other property. Indeed they had no legal rights in the royal system of Common Law; disputes were to be settled by the lord of the manor. Free peasants did have access to the law. They were able to move, buy and sell land, and manage their own affairs largely as they chose, but their economic conditions were not necessarily much better than those of the villeins. The Domesday Book suggests that most manors had both free and unfree tenants, but there was some regional variation, and not all estates t a single pattern. During the later Middle Ages the status of the peasants became more complex; a great variety of specic conditions applied in individual cases. In particular, it became more common for villeins to buy out their disabilities, so that in exchange for a money payment they were permitted to move, alienate land, or send sons away to school or to monasteries. The blurring of the line separating villeins and the freeborn is emphasized by the frequency of intermarriage between the two groups. Peasant families were generally nuclear units composed only of a husband, wife, and unmarried children; it was rare for extended families including several generations to live together. It used to be believed that marriage was generally delayed until the couple had an assured livelihood, most often through inheritance of land following the death of parents. Recent studies, however, suggest that this was not the case, at least in the later Middle Ages. Couples most often married in their early twenties, or even (following the Black Death, which opened up new opportunities) in their late teens. As many as 94 percent of the peasant farmers were married. Their households were small, usually including between one and three children. Although some form of birth control may have been practiced, infant mortality probably played a more signicant role in keeping down the size of families. The average life expectancy was no more than thirty-three years, and (in contrast to the situation in the early twenty-rst century) only 10 percent of the population was over fty, although some people did live into their eighties or nineties. Because of their short life spans, most medieval men and women spent the majority of their lives unwed, either single or widowed; the average marriage lasted little longer than a dozen years. A recent writer has described these marriages as economic and emotional partnerships exible institutions that worked to the benet of both husband and wife. It was during the Middle Ages that the use of family names became common in England. Many surnames were derived from occupations. Examples, which tell us a good deal about the major medieval crafts and trades, are Miller, Baker, Brewer, Butcher, Shepherd, Carpenter, Thatcher, Smith, Taylor, Weaver, Wheeler, Franklin (a freeman), and Fuller (one who fulls cloth, to improve its texture following weaving).
Social Structure: The Aristocracy and Middling Groups

The upper groups in societywe may term them the aristocracybecame more clearly differentiated in the fourteenth and fteenth centuries. Earlier, the
feudal concepts of tenants-in-chief and more generally of feudal magnates set aside an upper class. With the rise of Parliament came the notion of parliamentary peerage, carrying with it the right of noblemen to be summoned to meetings of what developed into the House of Lords. We have already noted the origins of the earls and barons. Additional ranks of nobility were recognized by the end of the Middle Ages, producing the honoric structure that still applies today. The highest title of nobility was that of duke. There were only a few dukes; originally most of them were related to the royal family. Then came the orders of marquess, earl, viscount, and baron. In fact there were never very many marquesses or viscounts, perhaps because the titles were originally French and thus suspect in England. Dukes, marquesses, and earls used territorial names for their titles as, for instance, the Duke of York or Earl of Cambridge. The wife of a duke was a duchess; an earls wife was called a countess, because earls were at the same level of society as counts in France or Germany. Barons, the most numerous group of noblemen, were often merely called lord, like Lord Dacre or Lord Mountjoy. Almost all the noblemen were very rich and owned vast landed estates with hundreds of tenants and retainers. In general the members of each group were richer than those in the group below it; a duke was likely to have a larger estate than an earl, and he certainly enjoyed greater prestige. Ranking just below the noblemen in wealth and status were the gentlemen landlords who were not prominent enough to be ennobled but not poor enough to have to work the soil with their own hands. Collectively known as the gentry, they formed a group that soon came to be the most important element in English society. Although not noble, they are sometimes regarded as members of the landed aristocracy, clearly set apart from those below them in society. Some members of the gentry could claim the title knight. During the rst century or so after the Conquest, knighthoods were conferred, often on the battleeld, when the monarch wished to recognize outstanding military service. Later, knighthoods were given to those who had aided the government in other ways, or simply as recognition of the wealth and social status of the richer gentlemen. Knights could be elected to the House of Commons in Parliament but were not automatically summoned, as were the peers. Knights were identied by the title sir preceding their own Christian name; their wives were called dame, or sometimes merely lady, a title that could be confusing because the wife of a baron was also a lady. Knighthood was not hereditary, although it was not unusual for a knights heir to be knighted in his own right. Peerages, on the other hand, did descend to the oldest surviving son of the nobleman. Several middling groups (it is premature to view them as a single modern middle class) can be identied in medieval English society. Yeomen (the next group below the gentry) might be dened as working landlords; they owned land and cultivated it themselves, perhaps with the assistance of a few peasant tenants. Medieval writers sometimes idealized the yeomen and their wives, emphasizing their industry and sturdy independence. Among urban dwellers, merchants grew increasingly important in the later
Middle Ages. Some of them, especially those involved in foreign trade or in selling luxury articles, amassed considerable wealth. Many merchants dreamed of buying land and acquiring the social status that went with it, and a few succeeded in doing so. Lawyers already formed an important professional group by the fteenth century. As today, the practice of law was a means by which clever young men could rise in society. They often hoped to enter the ranks of the gentry if they prospered. Churchmen tted into the social scheme at all levels. The bishops and archbishops were as aristocratic as the peers; they held landed estates and were summoned to Parliament as Lords Spiritual. Parish priests were supported by the tithes of their parishioners: as rectors, the clergy were legally entitled to a tenth of the produce of agricultural estates and to an equivalent share in the income of urban dwellers (though this was more difcult to collect). Some parish priests were well-off and lived comfortably, like minor gentry, whereas others were closer to the status of the yeomen or peasants to whom they ministered. Like the bishops, the heads of the larger monasteries were summoned to Parliament as Lords Spiritual and enjoyed substantial incomes from their estates. Even ordinary monks generally had better food and housing than the peasant households from which most of them came. The church, like trade and the law, offered an opportunity for intelligent, enterprising young men to rise in society; it was largely staffed by those whose parents had been common people, rural laborers or urban artisans.
Medieval Women
Medieval society was dominated by men, and women were seldom involved in government, warfare, land management, or the professions. The lives of ordinary women primarily revolved around their families, the two primary duties of women being to provide the management for daily affairs in the household, and to bear and rear the children. Women were an essential part of the domestic economy, beginning with the dowry a woman brought with her upon her marriage, to the labor she provided in running the household, and often extending to small-scale production in the form of selling vegetables or eggs, making and selling ale, or doing some aspect of textile production. In the meantime she was performing the daily round of activities in the home: cooking, cleaning, laundry, and child care. Barbara Hanawalts statistics based on coroners rolls are especially useful in giving us a glimpse into the household work of medieval women. Even though statistically womens work was less dangerous than that of men (only 22 percent of accidental death cases occurred among women), more women died of accidents in the home or close by. The causes of death show us much concerning medieval daily life. Both men and women died as a result of house res and walls falling on sleeping victims. A signicant number of women drowned in public wells and ponds (while fetching water for the household). Deaths also occurred among women working with large farm animals or doing seasonal eldwork. And one of the most dangerous activities for both women and children was doing laundry, since this involved boiling large tubs of water that could easily tip and scald anyone close to the re. Another startling cause of death among
children was being eaten by wild pigs that ran the streets and would attack a child left in the cradle. This gruesome statistic tells us that womens duties sometimes took them away from home to perform tasks where a baby would be an encumbrance or that were of a nature that the woman believed the child to be safer left at home. Aristocratic women had challenging responsibilities in managing large households of servants and retainers as well as large families of their own, and their presence graced the banquets, dances, and other social events held at the court or in the castles of the nobility. Occasionally widows took over the management of their husbands estates or businesses, and some of them seem to have had considerable freedom to exercise their talents in these areas. Brief examination of the lives of three exceptional medieval women will dispel any notion that their lives were inevitably dull or unimportant. We may consider the careers of Englands greatest medieval queen, Eleanor of Aquitaine; one of the most fascinating religious mystics, Margery Kempe; and an exceptionally articulate and able gentlewoman, Margaret Paston. Eleanor of Aquitaine was born in southern France, the daughter of a duke of Aquitaine, whose properties she inherited. By her fathers arrangement she was married to the king of France, Louis VII, and she went with him on a Crusade. Their marriage was annulled in 1152, probably because it had not produced a male heir but in theory because of a distant kinship between husband and wife. Eleanor almost immediately married Henry II of England, thus bringing Aquitaine into his far-ung empire. A headstrong woman, she never got on well with Henry. For a time she was kept under arrest in one or another of Henrys English castles. Finally allowed to establish her own residence at Poitiers, in southern France, she created one of Europes most sophisticated courts, with elegant private chambers, tournaments fought by armed knights, visits by aristocrats making pilgrimages, and music and poetry composed by troubadoursindeed, all the trappings of chivalry and courtly love. Eleanor was deeply involved in the political machinations of her four sons against their father. After the death of Henry II she was virtually the ruler of England while Richard the Lionheart was gone on his Crusade. Dying in 1204, she was buried alongside kings of France at Fontevrault Abbey in Normandy. Margery Kempe was the daughter of a rich merchant, the mayor of Lynn in East Anglia. Intimate details of her life are known because she dictated her autobiography, The Book of Margery Kempe. Strangely enough, the book did not come to light until the 1930s. In it she relates her marriage to a husband of lower status, her immediate pregnancy, and the sicknesses and difcult labors that attended the birth of all of her fourteen children. Finally, religious meditation led her to reject her husbands sexual advances. An extraordinary scene in the autobiography describes how she and her husbandover cakes and a beeragreed that she might take a vow of celibacy, although they would share the same bed and eat together on Fridays. Despite this agreement they lived apart until his old age, when she took him in and nursed him. Claiming to be visited by visions of Christ, Margery came to believe that she had a special vocation to weep for sinners and pray for the salvation of their souls. She died about 1440.
The famous Paston Letters, an extraordinary collection of more than one thousand items dating from the fteenth century, give us a remarkable insight into the interests and exertions of Margaret Paston. She was married to Sir John Paston, a prominent member of the gentry in the county of Norfolk. Because her husband had to spend a good deal of time conducting business in London and attending Parliament there, Margaret often assumed responsibility for managing the family estates and dealing with difcult legal problems that arose at home, and she handled everything with notable efciency. She helped arrange the education of her sonsthey attended Eton and Oxford, and one of them entered the churchas well as the marriage of her daughters. When her husband fell ill she prayed for him and promised to undertake a pilgrimage to the famous shrine at Walsingham if he recovered. Her affectionate relationship with Sir John and her special love for her son Walter come out clearly in their letters to each other. Among other fascinating women of this era one might single out Dame Julian of Norwich, a nun who became a mystic recluse and the author of the striking Revelations of Divine Love, and Countess Ela of Salisbury, who after her husbands death in 1226 founded a nunnery at Lacock and served as its abbess for nearly twenty years. At least two womenKatherine the Surgeon of London and Ann the Medica of Yorkare known to have practiced medicine, with more professional skill than the hundreds of women who served as midwives. Elizabeth de Burgh, Lady of Clare, was involved in high politics during the unsettled years of the early fourteenth century but is remembered chiey as the founder of Clare College at Cambridge. Henry VIIs mother, Lady Margaret Beaufort, was another notable patron of Cambridge University, the founder of not one but two colleges, Christs and St. Johns. Her statue may still be seen over the entrance to these houses of learning.
Inheritance Patterns
The legal system known as primogeniture determined inheritance patterns among the upper classes. In order to keep estates together, so that a family could retain its status over a period of more than a single generation, the oldest surviving son inherited both his fathers title (if there was one) and his lands. Some provision was made, of course, for other members of the family. Widows generally received the revenues from about a third of the estate during their lifetimes, or until they remarried. Because women often outlived their husbands by several decades, these jointures could be a considerable continuing burden on the heirs. Daughters were usually provided with a substantial dowry at the time of their marriage. This was controlled by their husbands during the duration of the marriage, but it could be reclaimed by the woman should the husband die. Similar portions were sometimes given to nunneries if daughters chose a religious life instead of marriage, or if their parents arranged for them to enter a religious house because a suitable husband could not be found. Because of the expense of dowries, some fathers did not even look for suitable husbands for their daughters, especially younger ones. Younger sons were unfortunate victims of the system of primogeniture, but
they were frequently able to marry heiresses who had no brothers and thus assume control of their wives estates. They could also seek respectable careers in the church or the law. It was thought to be less acceptable for descendants of the aristocracy to enter commerce, but some did become merchants nonetheless. The county of Kent was unique in having the custom of partible inheritance, called gavelkind, in which sons received equal shares of their fathers property. This system may go back to the traditions of the Jutes, who settled the area. Partible inheritance was also usual in Wales and Ireland, although it gradually died out as English law was introduced. Until the sixteenth century only personal property could be willed away; except in special circumstances, lands passed according to primogeniture and other established legal precedents. It was common for those who made wills to bequeath some property to the church, so as to procure prayers for the souls of the dead. Indeed, wills were prefaced by testaments, professing faith in God. For this reason church courts, rather than the Common Law, oversaw the administration of wills and testaments until the nineteenth century. Judgment that the testament was not heretical was part of the procedure. Landless laborers were less likely to be involved with the law and could generally dispose of their meager goods as they wished.
Farms and Towns

Because most people throughout the British Isles lived off the soil, it is useful to have some understanding of medieval farming practices. Reference has already been made to the system of open-eld or strip farming that characterized Anglo-Saxon agriculture and the manorial system. It would be a mistake, however, to assume that all land was cultivated in this way. Much of England, and most of Scotland and Wales, was better suited for grazing than for plowing and planting, and most manors included both arable land and pasture. The animals most frequently kept were sheep, cattle, oxen, and pigs. Wheat was the most usual cereal crop, though rye and oats were also grown. Fruit orchards were also common, especially in Kent and Worcestershire. Where the land was plowed, the soil was usually easy to work and could be turned over by a light plow pulled by two oxenhorses were rarely used. A number of well-built timber barns dating from the later Middle Ages survive; one of the best preserved is at Widdington in Essex. Expansion was necessarily a constant theme in British society between the Conquest and the Black Death, since the population increased so rapidly during this period. In terms of actual land, expansion meant cutting down trees and creating what were called assarts, or open spaces, in forests, in order to increase the amount of land available for cultivation. Fen and marsh lands could also be drained for agriculture. All in all, more land in England was cultivated during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries than at any other time in the realms history, except for World War II. New lands were won for farming in Scotland and Ireland as well. Economic expansion could also take other forms. Existing farmland could be cultivated more intensively, by using manure as fertilizer and by modifying the cus-
Priors Hall Barn, Widdington, Essex, a ne example of a large fteenth-century timber barn. Reproduced by permission of English Heritage.
tom of crop rotation, so that elds were planted two years out of three rather than only in alternate years. More intensive trade and urbanization could also provide a livelihood for an expanded populace. New towns in England were often created by royal charter; by the fourteenth century there were at least three hundred identiable urban areas. Some urbanization occurred, too, in Scotland, Ireland, and Wales. Many existing towns and farming villages grew in size and importance during the later Middle Ages. Most of them served as markets for agricultural produce and for those commodities that farmers could not provide themselves. A large number of English towns still have their marketplacesgenerally, large central squares where open-air stalls can be erected to display a variety of goods. In some places, like Chichester, beautiful stone market crosses were erected to provide some cover for transactions during inclement weather. Markets were usually held only one day a week, but some towns had more than one. Kings Lynn, for instance, had both a Saturday market and a Tuesday market, held in different places. Ipswich, also in East Anglia, had separate markets for cloth, wool, sh, meat, cheese, wood, utensils, and livestock. The larger cities were surrounded by high stone walls, intended to keep out intruders and ensure the safety of merchants and citizens. Only small portions of the London city wall survive, but place names like Barbican, Moorgate, and Bishopsgate still serve as reminders of its existence and its great portals. Much of the medieval wall remains at York and Chester, and a walk along the top of the wall helps one appreciate the size and layout of these medieval cities. Many towns beneted from the right to hold fairs, a privilege that was usually
granted by royal charter. Itinerant traders brought luxury goods and other unusual items, often imported, to these fairs, which were held only once or twice a year, and families might travel some distance to purchase commodities that were not ordinarily available. Sometimes fairs were held some distance outside towns because of the possibility of disturbances at them. At Cambridge, for example, the famous Stourbridge Fair took place at Barnwell, a village several miles away from the town center. Special courts, called courts of pie powder (the phrase is derived from the French pieds poudrs or dusty feet), were sometimes held to deal speedily, on the spot, with disputes that arose at these fairs. Foreign goods were sold at fairs, as well as at settled locations in the larger cities like London and York. Luxurious textiles, including silks, velvets, and cloth of gold, were the most valuable imports, but French wines did not lag far behind. (Water was not thought to be a healthful drink in the Middle Ages; the poor drank beer or ale and the rich drank wine.) Furs from the Baltic were prized, as were metalwork from Germany and the spices, rare fruits, sugar, and rice that came from more distant lands, often aboard Italian galleys. The British exported wool, grain, sh, and dairy products to help pay for these imports.
The Wool Trade

Throughout the Middle Ages Englands most important export was wool. Even poor peasants might own a few sheep, but most wool came from the substantial estates held by the gentry and aristocracy. Church lands, especially those owned by monasteries, also provided pasture for large ocks. St. Peters abbey in Gloucester, for instance, owned more than 10,000 sheep in 1300, while the total number in England is thought to have been between fteen and eighteen million. By the end of the thirteenth century, England was exporting more than thirty thousand sacks of wool a yearnearly 6,000 tons. Wool produced in England was made up into nished cloth on the Continent, primarily in Flanders, and large quantities of cloth were imported by the residents of the British Isles. Luxury fabrics, of higher quality than those produced in England, were especially popular with members of the aristocracy. The wool trade was handled largely by foreign merchants. Italians, some of them papal tax collectors, dominated during the earlier Middle Ages. In later centuries German traders from the Hanseatic League were also important. They secured special privileges in England, including the right to have their own guildhall in London as well as exemption from some customs duties. During the fourteenth century, English merchants controlled more of the wool trade themselves; they gained royal charters that allowed them to set up monopolistic centers on the Continent, called staples, as centers of their activity. The staple at Calais was especially important. Trading here was regulated by a small group of Englishmen known as merchants of the staple. The wool trade declined during the second half of the fourteenth century, in part because of a great increase in the quantity of cloth being made within England. Indeed, England began to export nished cloth as well as raw wool. Trade with the
Netherlands continued to ourish in the fteenth century, but elsewhere the sale of both wool and cloth declined.
Guilds
Guilds were important institutions in medieval towns and cities. They were originally established for religious and social purposes: guild members, sometimes including women, made small annual payments in exchange for which they received prayers offered by a guild chaplain in the local parish church, or in a special chapel at a cathedral. Their funerals would be handled by the guild, whose members would attend, and nancial assistance might be provided for survivors. (Medieval funerals were often costly, and the expense might be a great burden for those who did not belong to guilds.) Such a guild is known to have existed at Canterbury as early as the ninth century. A London guild founded in the tenth century had the additional purpose of maintaining the peace. Merchant or craft guilds came slightly later. They arose when guilds dominated by merchants, like the Trinity Guild of Coventry, began to regulate conditions of manufacture and trade. In this case the cloth trade came under the control of the Trinity Guild, and one of its members was routinely chosen mayor. In London, guilds were organized to represent such groups as the mercers, shmongers, goldsmiths, and tallow chandlers (candle makers). In the fourteenth century a number
The guildhall at Lavenham, a prosperous wool town in East Anglia. The half-timbered style was commonly used for houses as well as civic buildings. Reproduced by permission of the Royal Commission on the Historical Monuments of England.
of guilds were incorporated; because of their special insignia, they came to be called livery companies. Some still survive, though they are now merely honorary social organizations, and their halls are frequently used for civic ceremonies. Guilds commonly enforced a seven-year apprenticeship for young men wishing to enter organized crafts or trades. Apprentices lived in their masters household and served him without pay while they were learning special skills. On completing this period of training they could become journeymen, able to work in the employ of masters. Eventually (if they prospered) they might become masters themselves, with their own apprentices and journeymen. Guilds were sometimes criticized because they created monopolies, but it is also true that they were creative forces, providing education, control over the quality of products, mutual assistance in time of need, and good fellowship for their members.
Housing
Ordinary men and women of the Middle Ages lived in very simple houses, sometimes no better than huts. These were built of wood: often two large curved pieces of oak, called crucks, formed the basic framing, and the walls might be lled with earth or mud in what was called wattle-and-daub construction. Roofs were frequently thatched with straw or reeds; oors were generally compacted earth, perhaps covered with straw. Because replaces were uncommon, res were often lit in the middle of rooms, with at least some of the smoke escaping through a vent in the ceiling. Glass was too expensive for ordinary use, so windows were small and openings were sometimes covered with wood shutters intended to keep out the cold, but often precluding the entrance of light and air as well. Medieval houses were small and crowded, seldom more than two rooms. Furnishings were sparse, often consisting of no more than a few stools, a trestle table, and a chest. It was common for a number of people, not just husbands and wives, to sleep together in the same bed; indeed travelers, putting up at inns or taverns, might share beds with complete strangers. In rural areas it was not uncommon for farm animals to share a building with their owners. Such buildings were generally elongated rectangles, called longhouses, separated in the middle into quarters for humans and beasts. Wealthier members of society had larger, more substantial homes. Feudal noblemen needed great stone castles, both for defense and to house their numerous retainers and servants. Originally these castles were moated and protected by drawbridges, portcullises, and watchtowers. By the fteenth century, castles had become more comfortable, with large windows and re-places in their great dining halls and separate suites of rooms for their owners. Tapestries often adorned the walls, helping to keep out drafts as well as providing beauty and color. A quest for greater privacy is one of the chief characteristics of the life of the upper classes in late medieval Europe, and many of the ner houses in England, like Haddon Hall in Derbyshire, reect the success of such efforts. Private chapels, too, are a common feature of the homes of noble men and women.
Haddon Hall, a medieval fortied dwelling later converted into a Tudor country house. Only wealthy members of medieval society could afford large, substantial homes such as this one. Reproduced by permission of the Royal Commission on the Historical Monuments of England.
Even in London and other cities, most houses were built of wood and thus were susceptible to re. Modern concepts of sanitation were unknown; lth and squalor were constant companions of urban life. Streets were narrow and unpaved, but water was often supplied, sometimes through conduits, to public pumps and fountains. As the authority of mayors and aldermen expanded, civic buildings were erected to house council meetings, courts, and markets. A substantial guildhall, part of which survives, was built in London in the fteenth century, replacing an older structure from the twelfth century. Such town halls were generally made of stone, as were the homes of some of the richer merchants. A surviving example in London, now much altered, is Crosby Hall, originally built in the 1460s for a prominent grocer, Sir John Crosby, and now moved upstream to a site in Chelsea. Some attempt was made to control the intramural growth of London and a few other cities. As a result, suburbs of substandard houses grew up outside their walls. The rst stone bridge across the Thames in London was under construction at the time of the Norman Conquest. In medieval and Tudor times the chief recreational areas for Londoners lay near its south end, in Southwark rather than London proper, since city ofcials feared the disorders that sometimes arose at bear pits and theaters.
Durham Cathedral. This view of the nave shows the round arches and massive columns characteristic of the Norman style. Reproduced by permission of the Royal Commission on the Historical Monuments of England.
The Church
Christianity was a more powerful force in medieval society than it is today. Throughout western Europe, until the Reformation of the sixteenth century, there was a single church, acknowledging the headship of the pope but managing many of its affairs on a national basis. Earlier chapters have described the quarrels between kings and popes that were such a common feature of the Middle Ages in England. Medieval men and women were born members of the church, just as they were born subjects of the monarchy. They had no choice of denominations, and they were not free to decide where to attend services, since parishes were geographical units and men and women were expected to worship regularly in their own parish church unless they were traveling. As we have seen, they were required to pay tithes for the support of their parish priestthese were legally established payments rather than voluntary contributions. They often made bequests to the church in their
Salisbury Cathedral. This was built in the Early English style and displays features unique to England. This external view shows lancet windows and the great spire. Reproduced by permission of the Royal Commission on the Historical Monuments of England.
Wells Cathedral. Shown here is the facade with its extraordinary display of medieval sculpture. Reproduced by permission of the Royal Commission on the Historical Monuments of England.
130 Part II Norman Britain Westminster Abbey. The choir was rebuilt by Henry III in the Early English style. Coronations take place at the high altar shown here. Reproduced by permission of the Royal Commission on the Historical Monuments of England.
wills, ensuring the continuity of prayers for the dead and sometimes providing for educational and social services as well. Despite continued acknowledgment of papal authority, however, the Englishness of the church was becoming increasingly evident. In practice, kings rather than popes named the English bishops, who sat in Parliament and were among the monarchs chief advisers and administrators. Members of the nobility and gentry often took an active interest in the cathedrals and parish churches; elaborate tombs and monuments mark the place of their burial. Particularly during the fourteenth century, when England was ghting France at a time when the popes had left Rome for the French city of Avignon, efforts were made to limit the jurisdiction of the papacy. In the 1350s Parliament passed the Statute of Provisors, which held that papal provisions appointments to positions in the English churchwere generally not valid, and the Statute of Praemunire, later to be utilized by Henry VIII at the time of the Reformation, which said that English court cases could not be appealed to the pope if the king objected.
The period between 1066 and 1530 was the great age of church building in Britain. Most of the villages in England, Wales, Scotland, and Ireland have parish churches that were erected during these years, and the great cathedrals that survive throughout England date to the later Middle Ages as well. The Normans were great builders. They had constructed sophisticated churches in Normandy before the Conquest, and they were dissatised with the small, rude buildings they found in England. As a result they frequently demolished AngloSaxon churches and replaced them with more substantial edices. The Norman style in architecture is easily recognizable, for it is characterized by small windows and doorways that terminate in round-headed rather than pointed arches. Walls were massive, giving a great sense of stability and permanence. The roofs of parish churches were constructed of wood, but because wood roofs were liable to catch re, the Normans contrived a method of providing stone vaults for some of their cathedrals. This involved the use of diagonal stone ribs strong enough to carry the weight of lighter masonry that was used as inlling. All of these features, together with enormous circular pillars decorated with various ornamental patterns, may be seen in the Norman cathedral at Durham, which is one of the worlds greatest ecclesiastical structures. On the Continent the Norman style is referred to as Romanesque. About 1200 it was superseded by the Gothic architecture in which the great French cathedrals were built. Gothic buildings can most easily be identied by their use of pointed arches in windows, doorways, and arcades. The thirteenth century is often regarded as the nest period for ecclesiastical architecture. In England the style of this age is
The nave of Lincoln Cathedral. This is another ne example of the Early English style. Reproduced by permission of the Royal Commission on the Historical Monuments of England.
The Church of St. Peter and St. Paul, Lavenham, Suffolk, one of Englands largest parish churches. Built in the Perpendicular style, this is an example of a wool churchone built by the wealth gathered through the wool trade. Reproduced by permission of the Royal Commission on the Historical Monuments of England.
called Early English, since it exhibits certain features that are unique to the country. Salisbury Cathedral is perhaps the best example of an Early English cathedral, since it was constructed during a relatively short span of time and exhibits few features from any other period. It has large numbers of tall, narrow windows, called lancets because they resemble a surgeons instrument. Flying buttresses were used to help carry the weight of the stone vaults down to the ground. The buttresses made it possible to have thinner exterior walls, with more space given over to windows. The great spire of Salisbury, visible for miles around, was not part of the original plan but was added in the fourteenth century. Its weight created structural difculties that still present problems, but few would deny its exceptional beauty or its importance as a symbol of the cathedrals presence. The cathedral at Wells, in southwest England, is notable for the three hundred magnicent statues carved in the thirteenth century to adorn its facade. Much of Westminster Abbey was rebuilt in the Early English style during the reign of Henry III. Lincoln Cathedral is another great edice of this era. The earlier part of the fourteenth century saw the introduction of the Decorated style. Buildings of this age, like Exeter Cathedral and the choir of Wells, display larger windows with elaborate, fanciful patterns of stone tracery. More elaborate vaulting
Kings College Chapel, Cambridge. This is often regarded as the nest example of Perpendicular Gothic architecture. The royal arms of the Tudors are displayed above the west door. Reproduced by permission of the Royal Commission on the Historical Monuments of England.
patterns were also developed, with subsidiary stone ribs called liernes added simply to create elegant designs, without regard to their structural function. The nal phase of medieval church building witnessed the introduction of the Perpendicular style, a form that is unique to the British Isles. The architects of this age (about 13501530) possessed very advanced engineering skills that permitted them to open up vast areas of wall space for windows. They were able to construct lofty buildings with supremely elegant fan vaults, so called because they resembled the shape of a ladys fan. Hundreds of Perpendicular parish churches dot the English landscape. It was the responsibility of parishioners to build and maintain the naves of these churches, and the clergy were held responsible for the choir or east end. Some of the great Perpendicular churches are called wool churches because the wealth created by the wool trade made their erection possible; a contemporary couplet ran, I thank the Lord and always shall, it is the sheep has paid for all. The churches at Lavenham in Suffolk and Northleach in the Cotswolds are spectacular instances of such buildings. Many cathedrals were partially rebuilt in the Perpendicular style. The great
Kings College Chapel from the south. Most of the wall space has been opened up for stained glass windows; the weight of the roof is carried on buttresses set at right angles to the main axis of the building. Reproduced by permission of the Royal Commission on the Historical Monuments of England.
nave of Canterbury is an outstanding example. The nest of all the Perpendicular buildings is the chapel of Kings College, Cambridge, the result of Henry VIs inspiration and Henry VIIIs continuing interest and nancial support. Although it is sometimes asserted that medieval architects were anonymous, that is untrue. Their names are often known. The greatest builders were perhaps William of Sens, a Frenchman who worked at Canterbury in the twelfth century and was seriously injured when he fell from scaffolding there, and John Wastell, a native Englishman who designed much of Kings College Chapel. Most of the medieval churches contain stained glass windows, which on sunny days ood the buildings with color as well as light. Thirteenth-century glass is surpassingly lovely; the gemlike brilliance of its reds and blues has never been equaled. But the larger windows created in the fourteenth and fteenth centuries have their own special merits. Unfortunately, much medieval stained glass was destroyed in later centuries, some of it by pious but misguided persons who regarded all pictorial art as blasphemous or superstitious, but enough remains, especially at Canterbury and York, for one to appreciate its quality. Pictorial windows were useful as teaching devices in the Middle Ages, when most people were illiterate and could not read the Bible itself. The large biblical scenes incorporated in Perpendicular-style windows were obviously ideal for this didactic purpose. Outside England, styles were similar but churches were built on a smaller scale. In Scotland, large cathedrals were erected at St. Andrews and Glasgow, with more humble churches sufcing for the bishops of Aberdeen, Dunkeld, Dunblane, and
Kings College Chapel, an interior view showing the fan vaulted ceiling. Reproduced by permission of the Royal Commission on the Historical Monuments of England.
Moray. The ne Gothic church of St. Giles in Edinburgh did not attain cathedral status until the seventeenth century. By the end of the Middle Ages there were four cathedrals in Wales. St. Davids was (and is) an exceptional structure, but the others were no larger than English parish churches. Among the nest churches in Ireland are a handful of Norman buildings put up in the early twelfth century; the ruined cathedral of Ardfert shows thirteenth-century lancets used in Ireland as well as England.
Monks, Friars, and Nuns

It is difcult for persons living in the twenty-rst century to recapture a sense of the signicance of monasticism in medieval society. Monasteries, in which groups of men lived a common life regulated by a common rule, provided a home for thousands of people and spiritual leadership for the entire church. They were often centers of learning: illuminated manuscripts were copied in their scriptoria, historical chronicles were written, and theological treatises were composed and
136 Part II Norman Britain St. Andrews Cathedral, Scotland. Only ruins of this great church survive. Reproduced by permission of the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland.
St. Davids Cathedral, Wales. Elements of the Early English and Decorated styles can be seen in this photograph. The ruined building at the left was the bishops palace. National Monuments Record for Wales Collection, Royal Commission on Ancient and Historical Monuments in Wales.
discussed. The monastic liturgies, which consisted of eight daily ofces as well as a daily mass, came to include elaborate polyphonic music as well as the unison chanting of psalms and prayers. Sometimes boys were educated, sick persons were given nursing care, and travelers were lodged in monasteries. Monastic buildings were generally well constructed and displayed great con-
cern about sanitation and the supply of water. Arranged around a monastic cloister would be the monks dormitory; the dining hall, called the refectory; kitchens; the scriptorium and library; guest rooms; an inrmary; a warming room (often the only room in which res were allowed); and special quarters, sometimes spacious and elegant, for the abbot or prior who had been chosen as head of the house. Some monastic churches were as large as cathedrals (indeed, half the cathedrals of medieval England were also monasteries and were staffed by monks) and, despite regulations intended to limit their grandeur, they ranked among the greatest buildings in Britain. Because the monasteries were dissolved at the time of the Reformation, most monastic buildings survive only as ruins, sometimes very romantic ones, as at Glastonbury in Somerset or Fountains in Yorkshire, although Henry VIII did convert a few of the greatest monastic churches into cathedrals. Monasteries were also of great importance in Ireland, where the chief leadership for the church came from monks, and in Scotland, where the borderlands contained ourishing houses with beautiful buildings at Melrose, Jedburgh, and Kelso. These too remain as ruins. British monks lived according to several different rules. The most important houses were Benedictine; these black monks (so called because of the color of their habits) followed the sensitive, liberal rule of St. Benedict. The Cistercian order, founded in France, had a number of large houses in England, of which Fountains was perhaps the greatest. The most austere monks were the Carthusians, whose abbeys were called Charterhouses. More than members of other orders, the Carthusians practiced silence, fasting, and self-denial. Friars also played a major role in the medieval British churches. Not bound to reside in a monastery, as were the monks, and not allowed to own individual property, the friars wandered the country, preaching and teaching. Sometimes caricatured as jolly vagabonds, like Friar Tuck in the Robin Hood legend, they were often popular preachers who interacted with ordinary people more easily than did members of the established ecclesiastical hierarchy. Because women could not be ordained as priests, the only role the church offered them was that of nuns. The womens religious houses or nunneries never housed large numbers of people, but they performed a valuable function in medieval society. They made communal life possible for single women, including some widows, who otherwise would have found it difcult to establish suitable living arrangements. The nunneries produced some abbesses of marked administrative ability and a few mystics with great spiritual insight. Most nuns followed the Benedictine rule, although the native English order of Sempringham was popular in the early fourteenth century and the Bridgettine house at Syon was the largest and most important nunnery during the century before the dissolution.
The Church in Medieval Society

Two more points must be made. First, one must recognize the nancial importance of the church in medieval society. By the end of the Middle Ages the church
had come to own at least a quarter of the land in the several countries of the British Isles. If one adds to this the income from tithes and special offerings, it is clear that at least a third of the national revenue was used for religious purposes. Churchmen were great landlords, and their involvement with other groups in society was monetary as well as religious. The church was also involved in the daily life of ordinary people because its liturgies were designed to follow an annual cycle that related to the changing of the seasons and the phases of farming activity. The church blessed the planting of crops, prayed for their success, and held services of thanksgiving at harvest time. It brightened the bleak midwinter days with joyous celebrations at Christmas, Epiphany, and Candlemas. It allowed women to identify with the cult of the Virgin Mary and to join in her festivals, especially the Feast of the Annunciation (March 25, one of the most important days in medieval church calendars). It provided for times of penitence (Advent and Lent) and seasons of rejoicing (Easter and Pentecost). Its great shrinesnot merely Beckets at Canterbury, but also others like St. Williams at York, St. Swithuns at Winchester, and St. Hughs at Lincolnattracted large numbers of pilgrims and were believed to be responsible for miraculous cures and healing. It did much to bring warmth, color, and intellectual activity into lives that otherwise would have been cold, drab, and full of drudgery. It is impossible to know how many people regularly attended services during medieval times, but the proportion of the population was certainly higher than in our own day. For many people in the British Isles, the Middle Ages were truly an age of faith.
Wycliffe and the Lollards

During the fourteenth century the English church was unsettled by the activities of John Wycliffe. A theologian who taught at Oxford, Wycliffe became distressed at what he regarded as the worldliness and corruption of the clergy, who were often ignorant, selsh men with little genuine spirituality. He hoped that the pope would reform the church; when this did not happen, he looked to the state for change. For a time he gained the favor of John of Gaunt and some other lay magnates, but in the end they too disappointed him. Wycliffe was nally driven to question the most fundamental beliefs of the medieval church. He came to reject the doctrine of transubstantiation (which holds that during the communion the priest transforms bread and wine into the substance of Christs body and blood) because he thought it gave the clergy too great control over the salvation of individual men and women. He argued that papal power had no scriptural justication. He wanted as many people as possible to read the Bible themselves, not merely hear portions of it expounded by the clergy. He was one of the rst scholars to translate the scriptures into English. He and his friends produced the rst complete English Bible. The pope condemned Wycliffes teachings in 1377. A few years later he was suspended from his university post. He was not executed, perhaps because his orthodox enemies did not wish to make him a popular martyr, but a number of his followers
were later burned as heretics, particularly after Parliament passed the statute De haeretico comburendo in 1401. His disciples came to be known as Lollardsthe term originally meant babblersand Lollardy attracted a considerable following, mainly among urban craftsmen and the poorer gentry. After the failure of a Lollard rising in 1414 the movement went underground, but many of its ideas survived and came to the fore again in the sixteenth century, at the time of the Protestant Reformation.
The Jews in England

The Jews formed a special minority community in medieval England. They rst crossed the Channel from Normandy soon after the Conquest, settling initially in London. This always remained their center; the area where they lived is still called Jewry Street. By the thirteenth century there were communities of Jews in more than twenty towns and cities, including Norwich and Lincoln, where one of the nest surviving medieval homes is still called the Jews House. The Jews were active in nancial dealings, especially as moneylenders and pawnbrokers. Sometimes they were called on to lend money to the king, to bishops, and to religious houses. Part of the rebuilding of Westminster Abbey was nanced with money borrowed from the Jews. Their services were especially valuable, since in theory the Christian church condemned taking interest on loans as being usury. Jews also dealt in land and in grain. For a time the Jews enjoyed the special protection of the monarch, but they were also liable for special taxes, and the king was regarded as their universal heir. In theory they could not own land, since all their property was destined to revert to the monarch. In practice they did occasionally hold estates when foreclosure followed nonpayment of loans, but they were always urban in orientation and never joined the ranks of landed gentry. Christians seem to have grown less tolerant of the Jews during the thirteenth century, when there were unpleasant episodes in which Jews were accused (unfairly) of murdering a Christian boy and (more plausibly) of clipping coins. Because of these problems, and perhaps also because Italian bankers were beginning to supply the nancial needs of the aristocracy, Edward I expelled the Jews from England in 1290, reaping a handsome prot from conscating their property.
Schools and Universities

The growth of education was one of the most signicant phenomena of the later Middle Ages in Britain. Although most peasants remained illiterate, those involved in trade, government, and the professions needed to be able to read and write. Churchmen had to know at least a smattering of Latin. It has been estimated that as many as 40 percent of the male householders in late medieval London could read some Latin; the number who could read English would of course have been substantially higher. But these gures are extraordinary rather than typical. In outlying areas, among women, and among lesser working people, literacy rates were much lower.
Oxford University. A photograph of High Street, taken early in the twentieth century, shows buildings of several of the medieval colleges. Reproduced by permission of the Royal Commission on the Historical Monuments of England.
The most important schools of medieval England were the grammar schools, intended to teach Latin grammar to boys who were destined for careers in the church or, perhaps, in government. (Many medieval government ofcials were men in holy orders; the words clerk and cleric have a common root.) The most prestigious grammar schools were Winchester, founded in 1382 by William of Wykeham, the bishop of Winchester, and Eton, nestled in the shadow of Windsor Castle, established by King Henry VI in 1440. (They survive as two of the great public schools of England, so called because, although private, they made some places available to poor scholars.) The ability to dispute in Latin was highly prized. Boys also spent time in games, including football, tennis, and cockghting. Some boys were able to proceed from the grammar schools to the universities of Oxford and Cambridge. These great centers of higher learning grew up gradually, almost spontaneously, in the twelfth century. It is often said that Oxford was
founded by scholars from Paris who had experienced difculties with the authorities there and that Cambridge began when unruly Oxford students were expelled and forced to move elsewhere. Although these tales may have some basis in fact, the actual origins of the universities were less dramatic. Initially, groups of scholars congregated in favorable environmentsOxford may have seemed desirable because of the existence of several large religious houses thereand groups of students came, at rst individually and informally, to study with them. In the next stage of development, hostels or halls were established to provide housing for students; some of these were then transformed into colleges, which undertook responsibility for supervising the students studies as well as providing room and board. The actual universities themselves were at rst no more than collections of colleges. Their chief role in the Middle Ages was to administer examinations and award degrees. Three of the Oxford colleges (Balliol, University, and Merton) trace their origins to the thirteenth century. William of Wykeham established New College, Oxford, in the fourteenth century. Its link with his school at Winchester remains important even today. Kings College, Cambridge, was founded by Henry VI and enjoyed a special tie to Eton. Peterhouse, founded in 1284, is the oldest college at Cambridge. A number of additional colleges were established at both universities during the fourteenth and fteenth centuries. The curriculum of the grammar schools and universities was based on the seven liberal arts of classical antiquity. These were the triviumgrammar, rhetoric, and logic, subjects that would be pursued in schooland the more advanced studies of the quadrivium: arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music (here considered as a theoretical, mathematical exercise, not in terms of actual performance). Medieval students might go up to the universities when they were still quite young. Normally they spent six years mastering the liberal arts (the master of arts degree was intended to certify their prociency and was evidence that its holders were qualied to teach). Higher degrees were available in theology, medicine, and law. Cambridge, for instance, had a graduate faculty in theology as early as 1250. The theology studied at the great medieval universities of England and France is often referred to as scholasticism (literally, the theology of the schools). Anselm, the Franco-Italian scholar who became archbishop of Canterbury in 1093, was an important gure in the early development of scholasticism. In his writings, human reason was brought to bear in dening the teachings of the church, especially the doctrine of the Incarnation. The so-called Renaissance of the twelfth century, which included a fresh interest in the Latin classics and the writings of Aristotle, helped shape the progress of scholastic thought, in particular the movement to annex philosophy to theological study. During the thirteenth century the chief exponents of scholasticism were Thomas Aquinas, probably the most inuential theologian in the history of Christianity, and Peter Lombard, whose Sentences applied rened logical arguments to theological debate. Both Aquinas and Lombard worked on the Continent, not in England, but their ideas permeated instruction at Oxford and Cambridge for centuries. Two British thinkers, Duns Scotus and William of Ockham, did dominate scholastic
thought during its nal ourishing in the fourteenth century. Often criticized as an arid intellectual exercise with scant relationship to real life, scholasticism at its best did stretch the horizons of the human mind and provide a tightly reasoned intellectual framework for Christian belief. Legal studies also became institutionalized during the later Middle Ages, not in the universities but in the Inns of Court. These foundations sprang up in London, near the royal courts of justice, during the late fourteenth and early fteenth centuries. Practicing lawyers had chambers in the four great Inns (Grays Inn, the Inner and Middle Temples, and Lincolns Inn). Students were able to take meals with them, attend lectures, and assist barristers in their work. By the end of the Middle Ages the Inns of Court really constituted a third, specialized university. Like Oxford and Cambridge they retain many of their early traditions even today. The three ancient universities of ScotlandSt. Andrews, Glasgow, and Aberdeenwere founded during the fteenth century. A few Scottish students were also drawn to Balliol College, Oxford (as the colleges name suggests). Wales had no university, though a number of Welshmen went to Oxford. Surprisingly, Ireland had no university until Trinity College, Dublin, was established in 1592. There had been an attempt to found a university in Dublin during the early fourteenth century, but it came to nothing.
Chaucer and the English Language

Linguistic developments in the fourteenth century are of crucial importance in the history of the English tongue. During the rst three centuries after the Norman Conquest, English was little used as a written language. The church kept its records in Latin, and the Chancery, the law courts, and Parliament used Frenchoften a bastardized form, sometimes called law French. Not until the second half of the fourteenth century was English recognized as a serious literary language, in no way inferior to French or Latin. The language in use during the later Middle Ages is referred to as Middle English. Although it is not easy for twenty-rst-century students to read, since it includes both vocabulary and word forms that are different from our own, it is the direct ancestor of modern English. More than any other single person, Geoffrey Chaucer may be credited with establishing the position of Middle English. Chaucer was a major gure in politics as well as literature. The son of a London wine merchant, he received patronage and government ofce from Edward III, Richard II, John of Gaunt, and Henry IV; he served abroad as an ambassador and at home as a nancial administrator and member of Parliament. The most famous of his several writings, and the one most important in the formation of the English language, was the Canterbury Tales, completed about 1390. Here Chaucer used the form of English spoken in London, which came to dominate the dialects common in other parts of the country. The tales of the individual pilgrims making their way to the shrine of St. Thomas Becket
are as full of life as on the day they were written and remain our most vivid glimpse of the Middle Ages in England. The work achieved instant popularity, keeping the writers of manuscripts busy producing copies. Wycliffes English Bible, which dates from almost exactly the same time, was also inuential in establishing standard Middle English. The coming of printing in the fteenth century helped spread the acceptance of English texts. William Caxton, the rst English printer, set up his press at Westminster in 1477 and published nearly eighty separate books, including the Canterbury Tales as well as his own translations of French romances.
IRELAND
During the medieval period Ireland was beginning to be politically and socially divided into what would eventually be termed the Two Nations of Anglo-Norman settlement and that of the old Gaelic lordships. Anglo-Norman inuence predominated in the Pale (the stockaded territory of Dublin) and in the commercial port towns that had originally been settled by the Vikings: Wexford, Waterford, Cork, and Limerick. The Dublin Pale was unique. The English had attempted to delineate the land under their control as early as 1300, but by 1465, it was recognized that essentially English authority extended only to the counties of Meath, Louth, Dublin, and Kildare. In this area any (Gaelic) Irish were to take English surnames, to go as English, and be sworn lieges within a year. An act of 1494 provided for the construction of a ditch around the Pale to try to prevent cattle raids by the Gaelic lords from surrounding counties. The ditch was never completed, and the diminishing geographical area of the Pale served as a forlorn reminder of the limit of royal authority in Ireland.
The Anglo-Norman Towns

Regardless of politics, trade ourished in the port towns of Ireland. The Viking settlers had introduced their system of maritime commerce, and Ireland occupied a good location for Continental trade. Subsequent Norman settlement extended trade to England and Wales. By the late Middle Ages, Irish trade routes extended to such far-ung locations as Lbeck, Lisbon, and Florence. Irish exports included hides, timber, wool, and grain, as well as Irish linen, butter, herring, and some gold ornaments (though this was declining as technologies from other suppliers outstripped the Irish). Import items included the usual luxury goods of silks and spices, but far and away the greatest volume of import trade was in wine from both France and Spain. The earliest extant Gaelic poetry refers to mead, but by the Middle Ages, the chieftains and their courts were drinking ruby wine from Spain. There are no sources that let us draw any accurate conclusions concerning population statistics in Ireland during the medieval period. We can, however, draw on chronicles, trade records, political documents, and other sources to determine a little about demographics. Not surprisingly, the vast majority of names in the Gaelic
lordships are Gaelic family names and patronymics (the Oes and Macs referred to by one early modern writer), but those in the towns seem to have been of mixed backgrounds, with names deriving from Norse, Norman, and Gaelic all represented. Sources also indicate a few settlers from the Continent, including some Flemish merchants, French traders, and even Italian bankers. This diversity in population undoubtedly contributed to mixed social and cultural patterns in the port towns. In general, the population of these towns was fairly consistently conservative in outlook and much more inclined to show loyalty to the English Crown than their counterparts in the Gaelic lordships. Daily life in the towns of Ireland was not substantially different from town life anywhere else. Walls served as a defense against possible attack but also meant that res and diseases tended to be contained within the walls to the detriment of the inhabitants. As in all medieval towns, there was no provision for sewage and no guarantee of fresh water. One report of Dublin in 1489 commented that dungheaps, swine, hog-sties and other nuisances in the streets, lanes and suburbs of Dublin infect the air and produce mortality, fevers, and pestilence. Most roads were simply dirt paths, and movement across rivers and streams was more often by ford than by bridge. One need only think of the wet climate of Ireland to imagine the impact on travel. On the other hand, towns offered many goods unobtainable elsewhere. Among the guilds represented in Irish towns were the usual medieval trades of blacksmiths, carpenters, coopers, weavers, tailors, cobblers, and masons. Theoretically the Gaelic Irish were forbidden from being admitted to guilds, but the presence of Gaelic names in guild registers strongly suggests that this rule was not enforced. We have few pictorial sources representing Irish townsmen until the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. By that time the English government had already made the distinction between the tame Irish of the towns and the wild Irish of the Gaelic lordships. Representations of the two groups show the town Irish as cleanly and modestly dressed, essentially in English fashion, whereas the wild Irish are shown wearing animal skins and Irish rugs (another specialty export item). Though it is likely this has more to do with an ideology already focused on the savage elements of Irish civilization than with strict sartorial accuracy, it does seem plausible that the town Irish would have been more likely to adopt mainstream patterns of life than the more geographically isolated Gaels.
The Gaelic Lordships

In contrast to the diversity in cultural inuences in the Irish towns, the Gaelic lordships for the most part retained their traditional way of life and ordering of society throughout the medieval period. As noted above, the fteenth century especially marked a strong Gaelic resurgence, and even many of the descendants of the Norman lords (for example, the de Burghs and the Fitzgeralds) were adopting Gaelic language and customs and becoming, in the classic phrase, Hibernicis ipsis
hiberniores (more Irish than the Irish themselves). Whether ultimately of Gaelic or Norman origin, the social organization and customary practices of these lordships were essentially the same. The chieftain occupied the position of highest authority within the lordship. He might or might not have a formal claim to ofce through English law, but by the Gaelic laws of succession, he had attained his ofce as tanist, the elected heir from the derbfhine, or group of male relatives descended from a common great-grandfather. His followers were often relatives, or they might be drawn from dependent or allied clans. Technically the land did not belong to the chieftain himself, but rather to the family, or clan. The clansmen (brothers, sons, uncles, and so forth) usually provided the military strength of the lordship, though in the post-Norman period professional mercenary soldiers from the Hebrides called gallowglasses could be hired by the chieftains (or anyone else) to bolster numbers when necessary. Within Gaelic society, the clergy and the caste of hereditary elites called the aes dna were of as great a status as the chieftain. They all had their own dened functions, but all were considered as equally necessary to society. (This was based on a view of social organization very different from the Great Chain, with its myriad hierarchies.) The clergy often followed a hereditary succession (seen in names such as OClery, son of the cleric, and Maolmhuire, servant of Mary), though there was some variation in this as the Norman episcopal system became more rmly entrenched in the later Middle Ages. As for the aes dna, or men of art, hereditary succession was essential. This group encompassed the professionals of Gaelic society and included doctors, lawyers, teachers, poets, historians, and harpists. For as long as traditional Gaelic society lasted, this group exercised an extremely important role in upholding the Gaelic law codes and maintaining the way of life of the chieftains courts. The period of the Gaelic resurgence offered many opportunities for patronage and has left us with a rich supply of Gaelic manuscripts indicating much about the social history of Gaelic Ireland. The great bibliothques or compilations of chronicles such as the Book of Ulster, the Book of Connaught, and the Book of Lecan have come down to us in recensions from this period. They provide us with a wealth of genealogical details and evidence of clan life from the Middle Ages. In the rather laconic language of the chronicle entries we see births, deaths, marriages, wars, plagues, religious debates, tournaments, and other evidence of the fabric of life recorded. Moreover, from this period we have an abundance of religious poetry as well as secular poetrythe praise poems and battle incitements that were the stock in trade of the chieftains poets. In all of these sources we see strong evidence of a society that revered bravery and honor, hospitality and piety. An interesting note concerning the Gaelic sources is that they give us a better view of the role of women in society than can be obtained from English-language sources. As we already know from the Gaelic law codes, women in Gaelic society (probably derivative from ancient Celtic customs) had high status and were accorded many rights and privileges. It is clear from both the poetry and prose texts that women born into the families of the chieftains and the aes dna professions were accorded the status of
their birth, and that even after marriage a woman retained her connections to her birth family.
SCOTLAND
In Scotland a similar situation prevailed as the late Middle Ages saw an increasing division taking place between the inhabitants of the emerging burghs of the Lowland regions and those of the traditional chieftaincies of the Highlands. In this case the division was based on economics, social organization, language, and custom.
The Lowland Burghs

In Scotland town life was more of a social aberration than it was in England, where Roman towns had been established since ancient times. Depending on ones precise denition of a town (either generally as a commercial settlement or more specically as an urban center that held a charter from the king), most Scottish towns date from somewhere between the twelfth and the fourteenth centuries. Most often, the emerging urban settlements grew up around a cathedral or a pilgrimage site connected with a saints shrine (Glasgow, where the town developed around the cathedral, which was built on top of the Shrine of St. Mungo, is a good example of this). By the time of David I, royal mints had been set up in Berwick, Carlisle, Edinburgh, and Roxburgh, and by 1250 there were also mints in Ayr, Dumfries, Forfar, Glasgow, Inverness, Kinghorn, Lanark, Montrose, Stirling. St. Andrews, and Renfrew. This expansion of mints is important in suggesting a ourishing Scottish economy during the later Middle Ages. One historian goes so far as to say that it is possible that at certain periods Scotland may have been richer than England. To modern minds accustomed to thinking about the relative poverty of Scotland for much of its later history, this seems unlikely. However, conditions in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries could have made this true. The English economy had peaked and was in a decline at that point, and for still debatable reasons, the Black Death did not hit quite as hard in Scotland as in England. Moreover, Scotland was extremely well suited to the pasturing of sheep and thus was well placed for economic gain from the wool trade. Life in the Scottish burghs centered on guild production and commerce. There is no doubt that woolen textiles were the main export item. Leather skins and sh (primarily herring and cod) were also exported, and the shing industry helped foster the growth of the eastern seaboard towns, such as Aberdeen and Berwick. Import items included the usual luxury goods, such as ne fabrics and spices. As in Ireland, wine was a very important import item. For the inhabitants of the Scottish burghs, a stable monarchy was essential. The majority of Scottish burghs were founded by royal charter, and most burghs continued to have a strong loyalty to the Scottish monarchs. Defense was an important part of the Lowland burghs, and we have a dramatic example of the widening
gulf between the Highlands and Lowlands when the brave burgesses of Aberdeen stood in defense of their town in 1411 when threatened by the invading army of Donald, Lord of the Isles. The incident is recorded in a near-contemporary Scotslanguage ballad called The Red Harlaw. The linguistic division of the Scottish-speaking Lowland burghs from the Gaelic-speaking Highland lordships was both sign and substance of the changes taking place in Scotland during the later Middle Ages. As the Lowland towns became more thoroughly identied with the Scottish monarchs, with the exported Norman church organization, with English trade, and with anglicized social and legal organization, the Highlands became more culturally isolated, and more dependent on their political and cultural ties with neighboring Gaelic Ireland. The fteenth century was a time of cultural richness for both regions of Scotland, but not as part of a unied national movement. The great fteenth-century Scottish poets Henryson and Dunbar were not the products of the ancient Celtic tradition but were rather the voices of a new Anglo-Scottish society.
The Highlands
In spite of their increasing isolation from Lowland society, the Highland chieftaincies continued to ourish into the fteenth century. Though our internal sources are sparse, it seems evident that Gaelic-speaking Scotland shared most of, if not all, the Gaelic institutions that we have seen in place in the Gaelic lordships of Ireland. In Scotland the clan system was well established, with the same patterns of hereditary chieftains supported by the gentlemen of their clan (called duine uasals in Scotland) and the learned elites of Gaelic society. Unless forced to take action, they usually preferred to ignore the Scottish monarchy rather than to confront it. As it was in Ireland, Gaelic law accorded the right of land usage to the clan, not ownership to the individual chieftain, and clan feuds generally began over the encroachment of one family into anothers traditional territory. The land itself was poor and difcult to farm. The rocky elds and rugged terrain of much of the Highlands meant that many medieval agricultural innovations (such as the heavywheeled plow and the three-eld system) could not be used here successfully. The Highland economy remained centered on cattle (as it had been in Celtic times) and the main contact ordinary Highlanders might have with the Lowland burghs was when they brought their cattle to southern market towns. The difculties in agriculture also gave Highland society its distinctive unsettled quality. The Highlanders did not build towns and the chieftains rarely built great fortied castles. Rather, they had a number of small strongholds, and the entire clan would move from its winter dwelling place to summer shielings (temporary shelters) so the cattle would have access to the best pasturage. The practical reason for this aspect of Highland society was not understood by the Lowland burghers, or often the Scottish monarchs, who attributed the lack of settled life to Highland lawlessness and laziness.
WALES
Social life in Wales was largely a composite of remnants of old Celtic institutions with innovations introduced by the Normans and taking hold especially in the Welsh Marches. By the late Middle Ages, the coastal towns in Wales enjoyed prosperous commerce, and the development and spread of the fulling-mill (a device connected with nishing woolen cloth) contributed greatly to the Welsh economy. As in all regions, agriculture still played an essential role in everyday life. The social institutions associated with the old Welsh lordships were eroding as the English took rmer control over the region, but surprisingly, the Welsh language continued to be used, and the late Middle Ages saw a owering of Welsh poetry, both secular and religious. What is most noteworthy about the changing social patterns in Wales was the persistence of traditional forms of culture under the patronage of the new AngloWelsh gentry class. The old Celtic systems of landholding were in decay by the fteenth century, but in their place were the newer landed estates, and the new gentry class gave their patronage to the Welsh poets, who produced new genres of poetry based on the traditional poetic forms, but with new themes aimed at pleasing the tastes of the new gentry class. In this way, Welsh language and literature were seen as being part of the assimilation process, not subversive, as was the case in Ireland and Highland Scotland. Other changes in Welsh society point to the relative prosperity and stability of Wales in the later Middle Ages. As it was everywhere, the Black Death was a time of upheaval, but by the fteenth century, population was increasing and the Welsh port towns did a brisk business with both England and Ireland. It has been argued that the collapse of the old Welsh lordships may have actually improved the lives of the Welsh peasants. Certainly the revival of the cattle trade in the fteenth century did much to promote economic growth in the Welsh agricultural regions. It seems clear that the church in Wales was also enjoying increased prosperity by the late Middle Ages. Although Welsh revenues were still substantially below those of the English, beneces produced a reasonable living. Interestingly, after 1450, many churches in Wales were rebuilt in the new Perpendicular stylea visual sign of the increasing inuence of English customs and styles.
THE END OF THE MIDDLE AGES

English historians sometimes argue about the date assigned to the end of the Middle Ages. For centuries the year 1485 was used as a matter of convenience, since it marked a break in the history of the English monarchy. Now most scholars believe that the decade of the 1530s should be singled out as the turning point between medieval and modern times in Britain, if such a division is worth identifying at all. Certainly the personal monarchy and the universal church, two characteristic institutions of the Middle Ages, were still intact in 1485. In a broader perspective it does not matter greatly whether one thinks that the Middle Ages ended in the late fteenth or early sixteenth century. What is important
is to realize how fully developed British society had become by this time. Despite turmoil in the monarchy, both in England and in Scotland, quite sophisticated systems of government had been instituted, with nancial, legal, and parliamentary organs securely in place. Towns had grown; trade had expanded; royal mints produced the coins that were required in a money-based economy. Fine parish churches and great cathedrals had been erected. An educational system that included schools and universities of international stature had been established. Learning and literature ourished, as did music (plainsong, polyphony, and carols) and drama (especially mystery plays). It would be a serious mistake to imagine that medieval society was less vital and creative than what came later. Suggested Reading
Bennett, H. S., The Pastons and Their England (Cambridge, 1970). , Six Medieval Men and Women (New York, 1962). Bennett, Judith M., Women in the Medieval English Countryside (New York, 1987). Beresford, M. W., and J. K. St. Joseph, Medieval England: An Aerial Study, 2nd ed. (Cambridge, 1979). Collins, M. E., Ireland, 14781610 (Dublin, 1980). Dyer, Christopher, Standards of Living in the Later Middle Ages (Cambridge, 1989). Edwards, Kathleen, The English Secular Cathedrals in the Middle Ages (Manchester, 1949). Grant, I. F., and Hugh Cheape, Periods in Highland History (London, 1987). Hanawalt, Barbara, The Ties That Bound: Peasant Families in Medieval England (New York, 1986). Hutton, Ronald, The Rise and Fall of Merry England: The Ritual Year, 14001700 (Oxford, 1994). Keen, Maurice, English Society in the Later Middle Ages, 13481500 (London, 1990). Knowles, Dom David, The Monastic Order in England, 2nd ed. (Cambridge, 1963). , The Religious Orders in England, 3 vols. (Cambridge, 195659). Labarge, Margaret Wade, Women in Medieval Life (London, 1986). Leader, Damian Riehl, A History of the University of Cambridge, vol. 1 (Cambridge, 1988). Lepine, David, Brotherhood of Canons Serving God: English Secular Cathedrals in the Later Middle Ages (Woodbridge, Suffolk, 1995). Miller, Edward, and John Hatcher, Medieval England: Rural Society and Economic Change, 10861348 (London, 1978). Nilson, Ben, Cathedral Shrines of Medieval England (Woodbridge, Suffolk, 1998). Orme, Nicholas, Education and Society in Medieval and Renaissance England (London, 1989). , English Schools in the Middle Ages (London, 1973). , From Childhood to Chivalry: The Education of the English Kings and Aristocracy, 10661530 (London, 1984). Platt, Colin, The English Medieval Town (London, 1976). Postan, M. M., The Medieval Economy and Society (Harmondsworth, Middlesex, 1972). Power, Eileen, Medieval People (New York, 1956). Reeves, Compton, Pleasures and Pastimes in Medieval England (Oxford, 1998). Richardson, H. G., The English Jewry under the Angevin Kings (London, 1960). Whyte, Ian D., Scotland before the Industrial Revolution: An Economic and Social History (London, 1995).

Chapter - Middle Ages (For Printing)

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Chapter - Middle Ages (For Printing)

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Chapter 6

Medieval British Society, 10661485

ENGLAND The Population

116 Part II Norman Britain

Social Structure: The Peasants

Chapter 6 Medieval British Society, 10661485 117

Social Structure: The Aristocracy and Middling Groups

118 Part II Norman Britain

Chapter 6 Medieval British Society, 10661485 119

120 Part II Norman Britain

Chapter 6 Medieval British Society, 10661485 121

122 Part II Norman Britain

Farms and Towns

Chapter 6 Medieval British Society, 10661485 123

124 Part II Norman Britain

The Wool Trade

Chapter 6 Medieval British Society, 10661485 125

126 Part II Norman Britain

Chapter 6 Medieval British Society, 10661485 127

128 Part II Norman Britain

Chapter 6 Medieval British Society, 10661485 129

Chapter 6 Medieval British Society, 10661485 131

132 Part II Norman Britain

Chapter 6 Medieval British Society, 10661485 133

134 Part II Norman Britain

Chapter 6 Medieval British Society, 10661485 135

Monks, Friars, and Nuns

Chapter 6 Medieval British Society, 10661485 137

The Church in Medieval Society

138 Part II Norman Britain

Wycliffe and the Lollards

Chapter 6 Medieval British Society, 10661485 139

The Jews in England

Schools and Universities

140 Part II Norman Britain

Chapter 6 Medieval British Society, 10661485 141

142 Part II Norman Britain

Chaucer and the English Language

Chapter 6 Medieval British Society, 10661485 143

The Anglo-Norman Towns

144 Part II Norman Britain

The Gaelic Lordships

Chapter 6 Medieval British Society, 10661485 145

146 Part II Norman Britain

The Lowland Burghs

Chapter 6 Medieval British Society, 10661485 147

148 Part II Norman Britain

THE END OF THE MIDDLE AGES

Chapter 6 Medieval British Society, 10661485 149

You might also like